Alberto DITRACI
Antonio CARBE'
Chiara GATTI
Dino VILLANI
Enzo DE MARTINO
Franco BINELLO
Franco FOSSA
Franco LOI
Gabriella NIERO
Gianni DAZZIO
Gianni PRE
Giorgio PILLA
Giorgio SEVESO
Gioxe DE MICHELI
Giulio GASPAROTTI
Giuseppe POSSA
Giuseppe PROSIO
Liana BORTOLON
Mafalda CORTINA
Maria Clara BOSELLO
Mario BORGESE
Mario DE MICHELI
Natale ZACCURI
Orfango CAMPIGLI
Paolo RIZZI
Pier Luigi VERRUA
Roberta AVALONE
Roberto MAIOGLIO
Tiziana CANITERO
Vera MENEGUZZO
Veronica MOLINARI

Franco LOI

Criticism of Carola Mazot’s painting
10-01-1982
Sometimes happens to think about what would have been of us without some conjunctions occurred during lifetime.

For example, is not known how this mysterious meeting in front of the canvas comes, but I can’t imagine life without it; it has a so far origin. This is a Carola Mazot’s note. In my opinion, it seems to say many things in a very simple way: about artist’s position on the painting, but also about psychological and biographical constituents connected to work, daily life and to any painter’s deepest personal character. Carola was born in Valdagno (close to Vicenza) and she was just three years old when she moved to Milan and there went to Brera University; she was just nineteen years old when she moved to Venice, because her mother wanted to be back to her native city. So Zanetti-Zilla family was Venetian and composed of artists. Her grand-father was a talented painter and he occupies an important place in the history of Italian post-impressionist painting; her grand-mother was Matschegs’ daughter; he was Slovenian from Ljubljana and he was Ciardi’s master. Certainly her grand-father exerted his influence and he also took care of his grand-daughter artistic education; but as often happens, he exerted a conflicting and idealistic fascination. When her grand-father died, Carola became apprentice in Frisia’s study. “At the beginning it was interesting. Frisia forbad me to prepare the drawing in pencil, and he let me draw immediately just while I was painting. It was primarily a technical and skillful preparation, with life and still-life drawings and portraits. I was sixteen years old”. Afterwards she met Pepe the sculptor. “He taught me to work without never losing sight of the whole figure: while I was sketching, I had also to draw immediately the geometric mass figure, paying attention to all the details, never forgetting the totality. In this way I discovered the harmony and the link between the details of the reality I was copying; a mystery, a persistent fascination grew up from this”. Carola’s skillful-hand and exceptional taste have their origin in her home environment and in her hard and precocious apprentice; from her trust and her direct and unconventional connection with reality derive her inventiveness and her freedom from every modern and cultural convention. Carola Mazot, without following her Zanetti Zilla grandfather’s style, certainly didn’t fall into “avant-garde” or into cultural models temptations. We can find a certain neoclassical idealism, which is not disjointed from her enchantment for lights and colours and with her love for the reality changeable shapes, but a discerning eye can’t forget the framework strength. Carola Mazot loves too much the mistery, the strength which derives from every being and object, and then she also loves to lose herself into the details. All her pictures have that capability to contain all the details, and this capability derives from her natural overview. So, the melancholic softness of color, which is typical of the Venetian painting, is poured with quick drawing traits; her figures have a just sketched density, but they are full of dignity and are as immersed in the atmosphere.